Yahoo Directory - Should You Pay $299?

ALERT: PR +1 to 8/10 (Apr. 08), Yahoo! loses 600,000 backlinks but PageRank bumps up one point? That just doesn’t add up. (Apr 08). Started in 1994. No refund. Even though it is still going through a redirect server, I am seeing PageRank pass through. Referral traffic is a trickle. This is one directory that provides “TrustRank” with Google. This is a must submit for your site.

Update: Added 300,000 backlinks in Jan. ‘08. If your listing is accepted into the Directory, there will be a $299 recurring annual fee in subsequent years.

This came from a recent StomperNet article that I ran into. Not exactly something you want to avoid.?

I submitted Rungtong.com to over 123 different directories and it hasn’t seen any increase in traffic. The only one that seems to work that was free was DMOZ and just simply going and posting comments on sites. Although the No Follow rule doesn’t pass you page rank, nor does Google give you a solid backlink or credit, it does trickle small amounts of traffic that, if your site is well tested from copy, images, and coversion structure, you should with all purposes see more money.

The others

One of my favorite places to get free one-way links is through high quality paid and non-paid directories. Depending on your subject matter, you can expect anywhere between 230-1400 visitors a month from a quality directory.

Today, as of June 17, 2009, I recommend the first couple free directories:

–> DMOZ.org – this contains one of the oldest directories on the web. It’s also highly rated by Google. Once you are accepted into the directory, which can take 3-4 weeks, you should see your pages being indexed more frequently by Google. I’ve monitored this on my sites.

–> Joeant.com – great and favorite for link getting that will raise your PR a whole basis point.

–> Botw.org – not much to say here but to know that .org back links count almost as much as .com, .net, .edu and others. In fact, it may at times have much more impact overall.

How I doubled My Traffic With This Simple Technique:

- Sign up with a repuatable host like Godaddy.com and BUY an already existing domain. Or you can use sedo.com, domainnames.com and any domain name service that has auctions. In matter of two days, you can be driving targeted traffic to your site.

Can you imagine the transition Google goes through on a day-to-day basis? I mean living in the world of coding for Google or the team responsible for keeping their algorithm fresh. I can’t imagine and I don’t spend anytime thinking about it. But what I do think about is how much of an idea’s success is pinned on the “fresh factor” versus a sustainable idea that’s just so good it doesn’t need advertising, promotion or any substantial changes to it’s core value proposition.

If you said to Google today, we need to change the way our algorithm works… because we aren’t where we want to be. Brand new concepts, ideas and bridging the now from where we want to be sometimes becomes a whole new business without purposefully trying to make that happen.

For example, I think the Page Rank toolbar is the epitome of ?”stinky old socks”. Yep, nothing new there. Right, I mean when was the last time you saw any freshness with the Google toolbar and the way we as marketers find out page rank, backlinks, cached pages, or basic information about a site page or content.

I use a few different tools to find out the fresh factor or freshness of a site, page, content piece. When you start a PPC campaign, for instance, you would look at how is advertising for your main keywords you think are money makers, organize these into a spreadsheet by highest to lowest CPC, the Ad variations, the variations in ad text, URL, landing page and use of characters like tm or copyright. Then, using an analytics tool like Keyword Spy or SpyFu or Market Samurai to pinpoint your entry into competing on a keyword. How does this relate to freshness… easy.

• Fresh content is always rewarded by Google (this is in their editorial guides) and by your user base for the purposes of education.
• The auction of keywords is a revolving door in terms of price elasticity and search behavior. Do you think a person in the research phase for wanting to by say a car would use the same keywords as someone who wants to buy within two days?

When you bury yourself in the?minutiae of figuring out Google Page Rank for their algorithm for that matter, it’s a loosing game. All Google wants is fresh, relevant, newly thought of, better created, highly anticipatory solutions that searchers can get on the first try. It’s true, you get penalized by Google for not being fresh. So the next time you are out searching, building your campaigns, building content or trying to figure out Google, just remember being fresh is what works today and will work well into the future.